I think I’ve settled on a goal length – 70,000 words. Two reasons:

1. I can’t seem to find a definitive word count for novels. They seem to range from 50,000 to 80,000. Some sites say at least 70,000 for first-time authors to submit for publication, so I’m going with that.
2. I’ve got a fair amount of rewriting and “detailing” to go back and do. Once I do that, it will most likely add at another 10K (or more) to the whole book, based solely on what I’ve got in mind for Chapter One.

I know a book is “as long as it takes to tell the story” but I have a lot of story in my head and I don’t see Crystal Tech as your conventional fantasy/sci-fi novel trilogy, more like a series (a la Dresden Files) with recurring characters.

And speaking of Chapter One, I’m going to take another pass at it soon. Probably when I finish the current chapter (#5) to “finish it off.” I want something for people to preview (that’s closer to the finished product) and I want something I can start recording that people can listen to and allows me to practice recording and editing audio.

Tags: Crystal Tech, Word Count

I was bored and wandering around Deviant Art, when some of the gears and steampunk art caught my eye. I was inspired to take another pass at my cover art, dressing up that gear a little more. Me likee. Click the image for the full-size version.

Tags: Crystal Tech

Yea me! 11,131 on Crystal Tech. I’ve got a goal of at least 80,000 for the novel, so that puts me at nearly 14% done. Wow. Still along way to go, but I’m feeling charged.

Tags: Crystal Tech, Word Count

I don’t think I’ve posted this yet, but if anyone’s interested in following me (and my progress on the book) follow me on Twitter.

Hope to see you all soon!

Tags: Site News, Twitter

I guess I’m showing up in Google and other places more prominently now as I’m cleaning out spam comments on a daily basis. Not to worry folks, Akismet catches all of them before they make it out to the public. Which of course leads me to wonder, why they even bother. I guess some people just don’t run Akismet on their WordPress blogs and suffer the consequences.So I guess that’s good, that my site’s ranking is up and all the good (and evil) that brings.

In unrelated news, got another 1300+ words down on Crystal Tech and hopfully more today.

Tags: Crystal Tech, Site News

Still writing away, but I’m also on the look out for media to use with  the novel’s podcast. I think I’ve settled on a theme. Got it from Archive.org so it’s public domain (yea, free stuff!). It’s original title is “Celtic Tale A.” Not very catchy, but I like the tune and I think it captures the old world meets advanced technology theme of the book perfectly.

Also, I get to try out the built-in audio player for the web site. If it doesn’t work, let me know!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Tags: Crystal Tech

It’s not a final, finished product, but it’s what I have for Chapter One of Crystal Tech. Comments and critiques are welcome. I think it may need some more “meat” on it, but it has the events I want to cover in the first chapter.

When it’s closer to final, I’ll do a recording of it to try out voices and work out kinks.

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Tags: Crystal Tech

The book isn’t finished, but by God we have cover art! Some set of priorities, huh? Here it is for all the world to see.

Tags: Crystal Tech

Yeah, not even close on NaNoWriMo. I did get a decent start on chapter one for Crystal Tech. 60+ hour work weeks really don’t leave a lot of time for writing, but that should settle down now.

Tags: NaNoWriMo

OK, so far so bad. Work and the play have basically killed the first 10 days of NaNo and I’m just over 700 words. Not looking good. I’m still going to make a go of it. Wish me luck!

Tags: NaNoWriMo